Craneball Studios brings you: Blimp, a quirky game in which you pilot your blimp through puzzling maps, picking up travelers & destroying enemy blimps. This game features incredible controls, sounds, and stunning graphics. The levels are well put together with an increasing climb in difficulty, which adds to it’s high level of addictiveness.

The objective in this game is to steer your blimp through each level transporting clients. Fly from platform to platform, picking up and dropping off clients. After you have transported all the clients, you have to obtain a various amount of packages that are placed throughout each map. You can also collect bonus points, bonus time, and bombs to drop on various enemies. The enemies consist of turrets, tanks, and blimps.

When you turn on the app, you immediately notice the “designed for headphones” image, and you hear the police-radio-scanner-esque ambient music. You then take note of the intuitive main menu, which allows you to view the levels by rotating the globe. Select one of 20 levels (although you unlock one at a time), and you are ready to play.

This is a hand painted artwork of the main menu, this is not a screenshot.​

How does it play?

In short, Amazing. The frame rate is astounding, even on my 1st generation iPod Touch. There is never any lag or skips. Coupled with the amazing quality, is the controls. Featuring a “thrust-by-the-touch” and “steer-by-the-tilt” steering setting, you raise your blimp by holding a finger on the bottom right of the screen, and tilt side to side to move horizontally. The controls are as fluid as the graphics, and it is very easy and pleasant to control. And as if that wasn’t enough, every image in the game is high quality. There are no jagged lines and from a GUI standpoint, it is flawless.

Snagging the green clock will earn you 10 seconds, and killing the enemy will earn your score points.​

The gameplay is very simple. Nobody should have trouble playing this game. A good sense of logic, and decent reflexes should get you through the game. But to achieve the best score, you have to have a good memory, balance risk and reward, and have good time management skills. There is no mini map, so you have to form a good picture of the map in your head, remember item locations, decide which items to take, and beat the clock with surplus time.

Your score is dependent on: amount of time left after delivering all clients and picking up all packages, amount of bonus points obtained, and amount of enemies you killed. Sometimes you may feel the need to go grab that +10 second bonus, but you may have to realize that it may take you more than 10 seconds to get it and get back on course, and that you should wait until it is on course in order to maximize your efficiency.

After dropping a few bombs on an enemy, you get a sizeable score bonus.​

As you go through the game, the difficulty increases by adding different obstacles. This includes flamethrowers targeted at you, various enemies that can shoot you or ram into you, and radioactive clouds. The further you go in the game, the more enemies there are, and the less time you have. From my experience though, you are more likely to die of damage, rather than running out of time.

Just like the hand-painted graphics, the sound is originally composed as well. The music sets a tone, and the music has the power to turn “flying a blimp through radioactivity, fighting enemies, and dropping bombs” into a calm relaxing experience. You can get a good preview of the sound in the video above.

You notice here the amount of enemies (4), another has been destroyed, and a diamond on the bottom left that will add to your score.​

High Scores?

Although not currently available, version 1.1 promises use of global high score integration through Facebook. Most people already have a Facebook, and if you do, there is no need to register to another site for high scores.

Overall

Not many people know about this game, which I feel is a good thing. It’s not as hyped as other games like NFS or Rolando. The game is definitely unique, and for the small $2.99 price tag, you can’t go wrong. (currently on sale for 99 cents)

If you want a game that promises great entertainment and enjoyment for a small price tag, this is the game. Even though it is possible to blow through this game in a day, that’s not what the developer intended, it’s meant to be a calm relaxing game that you could enjoy for longer periods of time. Future updates promise more levels as well.